Bloggy

So I racked up one million hits on my blog a month ago, and decided that there was no better time to junk everything and start afresh, so here I am. I finally made the move from blogger and its older-than-my-grandma interface and tools and switched over to WordPress, which is kind of like driving a Ferrari after nine years of struggling with a Maruti 800 (without power steering).

All my posts are intact, comments and all, and I even managed to create a separate page for my TV column (which, as I’ve just realised, I’ve been writing for a year now!), so hopefully, the new space inspires some more pointless thoughts.

Hello! Just wanted to let you guys know that I’m currently participating in a contest for…Greeting Card Designs. I’m no artist, but I do like to think of myself as a professional doodler of sorts, and over the years I have been drawing many random things, but the last year or so especially, I’ve been shifting my focus on animals. When I saw this contest pop up, I knew I had to participate – not to win ofcourse, that would be too awesome to actually happen.

You know, at first when I started typing this post I thought it was all smarmy and not nice to like ask for votes in a blog that I haven’t really been updating but then I saw the number of posts this year and good god have I been regular or what – ok so maybe not 2008 regular but I’m still writing! Did you guys know that it’s been like what, 9 years since I even started blogging? My first blog was The Evil Autorickshaw which I started in 2005 when I was about 16 years old. I then deleted it because I’m generally an idiot like that, and started this blog in 2007. It’s 2014 now, and it boggles the mind to think that I’ve actually grown up with this space – Board exams, my spectacularly embarrassing teens, internships, my spectacularly embarrassing adult years,failing and passing CA exams, becoming an actual Chartered Accountant, MARRIAGE, wow! It’s been a good run, and if you’re reading my blog, or used to read my blog, if you like my blog, or if you used to like my blog but now think it’s crappy and disgusting wtf how did it even last this long – it doesn’t matter – you were part of my growing up years, and if I’m here, I owe you a part of the credit so let’s just go out now and get some doughnuts to celebrate.

I am the honoured recipient of a certain award which recognizes blogging excellence. This, was awarded to me by Mr.Maxdavinci , celebrity blogger and random likeminded crazy person. Thank you max, I am feeling really really proud of myself. Ofcourse, had you not included me in that list, there would have been some consequences which may have involved an auto and some thugs, but what’s a fight among friends, eh?

I’ve been blogging for almost 3 years, although I started over about a year and a half now, can’t believe its been that long. It’s a great hobby and I got to meet some great people too. So its been good fun and popularity is an awesome feeling.

A little more about the recipient of this award (Surprising as it is, I can never get tired of talking about myself) Max called me “A chirpy CA by day and photoshopper by night”. Sounds great, but a couple of clarifications. I piss people off in the day and sleep in the night. But yea, what he said, what he said!

So to get this award, I need to do this tag, which requires me to list down 5 posts which were lifted from the depths of my archives, related to 5 keywords.

1. Family. My family mainly consists of screwballs. But very pleasant screwballs, each one twisted in their own special way. And we love each other. A total Awww moment, I know. More about these wonderfully wonderful people, here , here and here .

2. Friends. I have hung out with the same people from kindergarden. Its the same gang. We’ve stuck together, which increases our awesomeness. I am full of louwes for my classmates who’ve managed to put up with me for all this time! Speaking of good friends, this was a really nice post .

3. Yourself. I never get tired of this. Enough talking. More linking, more linking! .

5. Anything I like. My extreme passions in life are sleeping, eating and making fun of people, but not necessarily in that order. But here’s another .

I’m supposed to tag people for this. But I can’t pick! What can I say, you’re all special to me! With that extremely lame excuse for outrightly outrageous laziness, I will click on the publish post button.

18 years of existence. Correction. 18 years, 3 months, 3 and a half weeks counting.

It’s all a big blur.

Its not any clearer. A year has gone by already?
Yes, Chutneycase celebrates its first birthday today. Truth be told, this is not my first blog. I deleted my old blog which had a fanbase of its own (16 year old lalu was quite the laugh riot) because, well, uh, I don’t know. It was called “The Evil Autorickshaw” (Catchy, yea?). I was not going to take up writing again but yes, I couldn’t let my public down so I started over (actually I was kinda pushed back into it). Long story, but here I am!

I took up blogging after my Aththimber introduced me to it. My first few posts were obviously terrible. They would hardly last 5 lines, mainly because I didn’t know what to write but I wanted to write anyway. I think people found it funny because it was the “laugh at” and not the “laugh with” variety.
But it made people laugh, which was enough for me. It grew into an addiction and I’m happy to observe that it still is.

After what has been a pretty eventful year, I would like to congratulate all my readers for their superior sense of humour and impeccable taste. If you’re a fan, I don’t blame you. Its really hard to not fall for my conditioned wit, loaded charm, seasoned intelligence and not to mention my super cuteness and most importantly my modesty.

Question:What do you get when you have leftover coconut chutney from dinner, Amma’s new terracota tumblers, Appa’s old veshti (dhoti), and a brand new Digicam?

Answer:A new template.I am so proud of this banner, every little detail is original. It’s an awesome feeling, almost as if this banner is my baby.A wee bit crazy, yes.But that’s exactly what I am.After all, I went snapping at chutneyfied terracota tumblers propped on veshtis.

Thank you Sony, for producing the bestest in Professional Amateur Cameras.And thank you, Adobe Photoshop, you always make me feel like God.

Niyantha:Me and driving have a very, very closely assosciated history. I think I can say with confidence that I am a good, if not great, driver, more so because I have had the ghastly experience of driving in the infamous Chennai traffic. I do believe that I have undergone many traumatic experiences trying to figure out what the Autorickshaw driver in front of me was trying to do, not to mention the frightful Metro water lorries. Of all the noteworthy incidents that happened last summer (When I was deemed qualifed by the local RTO to drive in India – one of my most significant achievements), the most memorable one would easily be the time when my beginner’s enthusiasm (popularly known as ‘aaruva kolar’ in Tamil) got the better of me…and the car.It was my first time on the road, without a middle aged man having a great deal of adipose deposits operating the car simultaneously. There was no ‘L-board’ on the car, upon strict instructions from my cousin. Apparently it was a ‘prestige problem’. I had my driver sit next to me (half-wincing, he was scared, I don’t blame him) for the required moral support and one twist of the key later, I was in control. Half a kilometre into the ride later, my driver realized it was safe to partially open his eyes. Which was the start of all my woes. He began giving me instructions to ‘speed-u’. Which I did. And then he decides that I was going too ‘speed-u’ and asked me to ‘brake-u’.Which I did.The price for my obedience?A nice dent on the car, courtesy the befuddled man on the bike who had no choice but to run into the car thanks to my braking skills.And out of nowhere, almost as though they had been paid for it, a crowd gathered and started asking me questions in a way that would have put any FBI agent to shame.My driver just sat there, unflinching. He was obviously a man of past experience, and by the looks of it, knew how to handle such delicate situations.He brought the window down and looked at the angry mob.Just as I thought he’d say something carefully diplomatic and explanatory, as one would during terse situations like this, he simply said “Ponga da, poi velaya paarunga, vandhutaanga….thu!”(roughtly translates to go mind your damn business)He quickly brought the window back up and said “speed, thambi speed”.Which I did.Varsha:Muhahaha. My sister is one total loosie, she just proved it. Let me tell you the story of:*drumroll*Chutney’s crash!eeee!So anyways, we had gone to pick up Queen Bratty-I-will-not-come-by-bus-yuck-yuck in her client’s office. She made me and Amma wait for like, forever. And then she comes all pish-poshing tugging on her NEW NIKE BACKPACK (unfair unfair unfair! her backpack costs more than what she gets a month from her office. She just showed up with it one fine Saturday from Office. Appa should have never given her a CREDIT CARD) and flippity flipping her hair. She was flipping her hair so hard that one peon-in-brown-uniform got scared and opened the main door for her.Hee-hee.So she comes walking upto the car and asks amma if she can drive the car.Amma said ok.:OSo she starts the car blah kablooie and drives upto the main road ok-ok. And then on the main road:

My sister suddenly applied the brake and KABLOOIE! One guy on the bike just crashed!Oh man, it was like in TV! Suddenly all these people started surrounding the car and asking questions, while my sister looked more perplexed than a Monkey who had too much Mango chutney.And then after some calming down of those people and telling big fat lies like my sister already has her license, we were free.Phew.

BPSKThe NY Times talks about the single thing most taken for granted in driving – shifts.

I was sitting in a conference room at a publishing company in New York City (not The Times) last week when an editor poked his head in the door.A hot new sporty hatchback had been dropped off for him to drive to a studio for a photo shoot.But there was a problem: the car had a manual transmission, and the editor couldn’t drive a stick.At first everyone in the conference thought he was joking. He wasn’t. His magazine isn’t a car magazine, so there’s no professional reason for him to know how to drive a stick. But I’d always thought it was a basic life skill, like rock, paper, scissors, and shuffling cards. I’d always taken it for granted.

Growing up in India, the land of the feared Ambassador cars, its impossible not to learn driving without shifts and a couple of crashes.Driving Pundits will tell you that shifting gears is what makes driving the experience that it is. The control of the engine and making it go vroooom, is quite a heady feeling. However, mastering the stick is no joke – it takes time, and a very patient Ramu-Driver.

But I suppose Automatic transmission’s biggest argument-in-favour would be the fact it allows multi-tasking. For the Indian Driver (chauffeur for all you pompous ones), this would mean:

->Time to ponder about the next swear word he’s going to use->Time to observe Namitha’s movie posters with the required concentration->Time to discuss the Indian cricket team with the “Saar”->Time to think about whether he should get Samco Chicken Biriyani for lunch or not.->Time to roll the window and get a better look at the “Super figure” crossing the road.

But, as them ‘chauffeurs’ will tell you, with wide grins, that they do precisely this when driving, come-what-manual.

I had a perfectly perfect idea for a post. Honest. It had all the elements of a chutneyfied post – a normal day, normal weather, normal people doing normal things and making normal small and ofcourse, my incredible talent to disrupt it all. But as I typed, I realized it would be normal. It was then that I decided I’d do something out of the ordinary. So instead of me writing the post, Ifigured I’d write, rather ghost write in the same style as some of my favourite bloggers.Hopefully, you’ll figure out what happened.

Ok:Cha! I konjam messed up yesterday. Already I’m a bit nervous when it comes to driving in traffic but yesterday I really goofed. What happened was that I was nice a minding my own business and driving. I saw this girl on the road. She was super pretty! So I decided I’d brake to get a closer look. What I didnt notice was that one loosu was behind me on the bike. Damaal! he crashed into my car and fell off. And in seconds one big crowd gathered around me and started shouting at me and all. Pah! Any normal guy would have got samma tense. But since I’m sooooo special na, they let me off. Ram’s charm 🙂What else, that was my exciting story of the day. As usual I looked orey sexy and spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror. Now that I don’t talk with loosies and all, I get more time for important things like this 😉Seri, sleepy now. I’ll go taatchi.

Shenoy:Yet another entry into the Shenoy Book of Records. The 156th entry into the aforesaid Bestseller would be “Disruption of traffic for the 34th time for no apparent reason.” The 33 other stories, I will save for another day, but this one story, I promise is the stuff legends are made of.It was a splendid day, and I was cruising in my Bentley Lookalike, the Maruti 800. As I was performing one of my expert maneouvres (namely, trying to move the gear stick) I realized that I had forgotten about my car’s mammoth horsepower decided that it would be a good time to test my Bentley 800’s Ferrari-speeding capabilites. They were indeed excellent. I realized that my car could now go at 40 km/hr without sounding like a horse on a treadmill. What I didn’t realise was there was a good man admiring my car (which I don’t blame him for, who can resist its ultra super good looks) and was so mersmerized that he was following it in his bike in order to get a better view. And in order to help him in his noble quest, I braked. And he got a super view indeed, including the stuff in my car’s trunk, a bonus privilege that I so generously added. He gave a squeal of excitement, and before I knew it, an entire horde gathered to fawn over my car. And boy, they were an excited lot, I could tell from all that swearing. It took some time for them to calm down and let me go again. My car has that effect on people. Oh well, yet another day when Narendra Shenoy adds excitement to the mundane life of the middle class with his happening lifestyle.

There’s a part 2 to this, with some of my other favourites being featured, along with the original story. Coming very, very, soon!

Updated 2015:
It’s been 8 years since this was written so I thought I’d give it an update. I am a Chartered Accountant, have been one for 3 and a half years now, and presently a contributor with The Hindu. Apart from that, I’m still spoiled, impulsive, and occasionally toss coins to make life choices. Reading this blog won’t change your life, but writing in it has changed mine.

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Coconut Chutney, whose real name you can figure out quite easily was born on the 8th Day of March in the year 1989. She toes the fine line between extreme intelligence and extreme insanity. She is now pursuing a career Chartered Accountancy and her motto in life is “Screw it, Lets do it!”.Extremely impulsive, she strongly believes that thinking about anything or its consequences is a waste of time, which is why she uses powerful, foolproof decision making tools like the 8 Ball and 1 Re Coins.She was born with a very very fat silver spoon stuck down her throat and has been spoiled from a very young age, which is evident from the fact that her first public-bus ride was when she was 18.Her sense of humour is mildly warped and ably complimented by her mostly demented mindset.Reading her blog won’t change your life, but it might make you laugh.So read it.

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